Irritating people

                                                    

Some people really get on my nerves.

People who disagree with me, for instance, because I’m always right. People who agree with me all the time are even more aggravating. How boring is that? People who have no opinion one way or the other are the worst.

Yep, I like to argue, debate, raise objections. If you take a position I support, I might contradict you — just so you don’t go unchallenged. Psychologists say people like me have problems with authority. I prefer to think of it as offering alternatives.

God demonstrates His love and patience by tolerating people like me. And He regularly sends irritating people to challenge my insistence on seeing and doing things my way, which usually leads to disaster. Maybe He is sending some of them your way, too.

Here are a few examples of especially irritating folks. If they rub you the wrong way, too, maybe God is trying to tell you something:

n  People who are more interested in doing God’s will than arguing about it. They challenge those of us who waste time dissecting, analyzing and rationalizing what God has clearly told us to do.

n  People who love God so much that they glorify Him with their words and their lives. Young believers who do this with extra freshness and enthusiasm are doubly irritating. They take away our excuses for coasting and complacency in the spiritual life.

n  People who serve others with love. Not just because they’re supposed to. Not just so they can check “ministry” off their to-do list. They serve others from a sincere love of Christ that naturally overflows to all they meet. Does that mean we ought to do the same?

n  People who have a heart for the world. They make it their business to be aware of what’s happening beyond their little circle. They see the suffering and need in places of poverty and turmoil. More than that, they see the pain of billions who wander in darkness without Christ, like sheep without a shepherd. And as Christ wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41,42), they also weep. Then they do something about it. They remind us how much we need to get beyond our own safe, familiar zones and out into the world.  

n  People who listen first, with teachable hearts, and talk later — or maybe don’t talk at all. These folks drive me crazy, since words are my specialty. They painfully remind me that words aren’t enough. God speaks in the silence of our hearts as we listen to His Word and His Spirit. Usually, the only response required is obedience.

n  People who pray. They might be the most irritating people of all, because they convict the rest of us of our prayerlessness, indifference and lack of hunger for being with God, seeking His face and responding to His Spirit.

I could go on. There are lots of other exasperating people who believe the command to make disciples among all peoples still stands, who are willing to go anywhere God leads, who aren’t willing to settle for less than all that He desires.

Thank God for them. They show me — all of us — what is possible in a life truly given to Christ.

(Want to be “irritating” on a global scale? Here are some ways.)

Retreat and return

                                                    

No matter how long the school year dragged on, I knew that once summer came, I’d get to go to my grandmother’s beach house.

Once there, I could count on her good cooking and unconditional love. We fished in the surf or from the boardwalk. We watched the sun go down beyond the horizon as the ocean wind cooled our faces. We talked, but silence was just as good. Being together sufficed.

I think about those summers as the July heat begins to bake. Grandma is long gone, and I miss her. But my spirit still yearns for beaches, rivers, mountains and other places that offer respite from the daily routine.

It’s a desire common to humanity. It predates by millennia the idea of vacation, which is a modern phenomenon. We long for a break — however brief — from the day to day, a pause from the familiar. We crave rest and renewal. A “separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power and a life-enhancing return,” the folklorist Arnold van Gennep described it. 

Church folks call it retreat. Modern-day retreats have become scheduled events with programs, speakers, themes and such. But the older concept of Christian spiritual retreat harks back to the holy men and women of the early church who went into the desert to seek the Lord. They followed the example of Christ, who sought out the wilderness to pray and be alone with His Father before returning to minister to the needy crowds.

The craving for retreat is never stronger than when the world seems to be falling apart. Wars that were supposed to be over aren’t. Old enemies remain and new ones emerge. Political and cultural disputes become more hateful by the day. People refuse to make peace with God — or each other — and hold onto their evil ways. Those closest to us let us down. We let them down. We disappoint the Lord. It’s time for a rest and a fresh start.  

These are times for a retreat in the old sense. Jesus beckons us to come away with Him to a quiet place, there to rest with Him and renew our spirits. Vacation is OK, but it’s a poor imitation of walking with Jesus in the wilderness.

The other great thing about true retreat is returning to the world. Vacations these days tend to be rushed, expensive, over-planned, more tiring than the demands they’re supposed to relieve. When you get home, you’re ready for a vacation from your vacation. But you return from a retreat with the Lord refreshed, renewed and ready to follow Him back into the fray.  

And that’s the real point of retreat: being with God, then returning to the world. He needs servants who have met with Him before they enter the global struggle for souls. If we try to serve Him in our own puny power, we’ll make no impact.

Seek Him in the wilderness and quiet, and renew yourself in His Spirit. Return to the world to shine His light into its darkness.

Little resolutions, big results

                                                      

(Listen to an audio version of this column at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/193/19330/19330-106637.mp3)

The new year has barely begun and you’ve already failed to keep your New Year’s resolutions.

 You have a lot of company. Nine out of 10 people who make New Year’s resolutions give up on them — typically after a week or so, according to the latest surveys.

Don’t take it too hard. New Year’s resolutions tend to be unrealistic, poorly thought out, too general to measure. They can even be counterproductive, cautions Jessica Lamb-Shapiro, who writes about the self-help industry. You fail to meet a self-imposed goal or deadline and feel like a failure. Or, you tie your hopes and dreams to an arbitrary date on a calendar.

 “If you believe that you can only change on the New Year — the inherent message of New Year’s resolutions — you will have to wait a whole year before you get another shot,” Lamb-Shapiro explains. 

 New beginnings are fine, but real progress doesn’t always run on a calendar. Especially spiritual progress.

Sure, we experience mountaintop moments and make life-changing decisions in our spiritual lives: the day we decide to follow Christ as Lord, the first time we lead someone to faith in Him, the day we respond to a call from God to missions or a particular ministry. But daily growth in Christ usually happens quietly, behind the scenes, as we seek Him, love Him and obey Him.

“[T]he transforming work of grace is more of a mundane process than it is a series of a few dramatic events,” writes pastor and author Paul David Tripp. “Most of us only make three or four momentous decisions in our lives, and several decades after we die, the people we leave behind will struggle to remember our lives at all. You and I live in little moments, and if God doesn’t rule our little moments and doesn’t work to recreate us in the middle of them, then there is no hope for us, because that is where you and I live. … This is where I think ‘Big Drama Christianity’ gets us into trouble. It can cause us to devalue the significance of the little moments of life and the ‘small-change’ grace that meets us there.”

Thousands of such moments come to us day by day. How we respond to them determines the course of our lives. Do we choose to seek the Lord in the quiet before dawn, or sleep another hour? Do we choose to meditate upon His Word, or ignore it? Do we choose to notice the lonely person in need of a kind word, or hurry on our way? Do we choose to speak up for Christ when the opportunity arises, or remain silent? Do we choose to pray for the lost, or curse them with indifference?

Most spiritual battles are won or lost in the unseen regions of the heart.

In the 1800s, Scottish missionary Mary Slessor went to West Africa, then a notorious graveyard of missionaries. She braved many hazards and spread the Gospel for nearly four decades. But Slessor wrote a simple truth to her supporters back home: “Praying is harder work than doing.”

Many believe the historic Shantung Revival in China began with the prayers of one person: Norwegian missionary Marie Monsen. Monsen was a missionary second, an intercessor first. No one except God “saw” her prayers. Their impact, however, changed the world.

“You see, Jesus is Immanuel [‘God with us’], not just because He came to earth, but because He makes you the place where He dwells,” Tripp observes. “This means He is present and active in all the mundane moments of your daily life.”

 Silent moments of prayer may seem mundane in this world. Eternity will reveal otherwise.

(Want to change history through prayer? Visit imb.org/main/pray)

 

Seeking the unseen kingdom

                                                         

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,” Jesus taught His disciples to pray.
Where is the kingdom of God? You will find it on no map, but it is coming — one soul, one household, one village, one nation at a time.

“We arrived at house number 37 and were met by a sweet, short, red-headed woman with a smile that flashed the most beautiful gold teeth,” an IMB missionary wrote earlier this year. “We introduced ourselves and told her that we came to her village to tell her that God loves her and to give her a copy of His Word. She took the gift and invited us into her home. Once inside, we met a man with a sad, sunken face. He had no legs. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Yesterday, I wanted to die.’ We talked about faith matters and asked if he wanted to invite Jesus into his life. He asked if he could right now, and then he prayed with great emotion. Then I looked up and saw his wife with tears streaming down her face, and I asked if she had repented, too. She said, ‘Yes, right along with my husband.’

“When we arrived, that house had been full of despair, but the Savior gave hope. I am so grateful that I still have legs and can walk into places and touch lives for eternity. Though I don’t get to experience it every day, I was born for this.”

You were born for it, too, if you belong to Christ. Before you can spread the kingdom of God, however, you must seek it with all your heart. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you,” Jesus urged in the same sermon that contained His guide to prayer (Matthew 6:33, KJV). Only one thing is necessary, He told anxious Martha: Sit quietly at the feet of the Master, like Mary (Luke 10:38-42).

Worldly kingdoms are visible. They traffic in power, wealth, military might, prestige. Victory is to be sought at all costs. Defeat is the ultimate humiliation.

The unseen kingdom of God, by contrast, glories in humiliation. Its symbol is a cross. In this life, it offers rejection, suffering and death. It demands surrender. The reward: union with the Lord.

“To really be His heart, His hands and His voice, to completely love the Lord with all our heart, soul and mind, we must totally surrender to God’s leadership,” says IMB President Tom Elliff. “This means being unconditionally, wholeheartedly committed to God — first to love Him, then to love others.”

It begins in prayer, a deeper form of prayer than many of us have experienced.

“Most people don’t know how to pray for the fulfillment of the Great Commission because they don’t even know how to pray for themselves,” said Marty Sampson,* an associate pastor from Alabama who attended the first School of Prayer for All Nations, held earlier this year at IMB’s International Learning Center. Sampson, who asked that his real name not be used because he travels to overseas regions hostile to Christianity, said he was drawn to the school out of deep conviction that Southern Baptists have forgotten the importance of prayer.

“I’m convinced the church lags behind in spreading the Gospel because we are depending on ourselves, our strategies and our plans as opposed to the power of God in response to intercessory prayer,” he told IMB writer Don Graham. “I’ve been on a personal journey in my spiritual life of learning to be dependent on Him. And the key to that is absolute surrender. Everything about my life, everything that I value, I’m going to put on the altar so that nothing takes precedence over God.”

Drawing away from the world in order to change the world seems counterintuitive, but it was the spiritual practice Jesus Himself followed. He sought out solitary places to be alone with His Father and to listen to His voice. He returned to the world filled with God’s Spirit and power.

Let’s follow Christ’s example. No strategy, no amount of resources will bring light to the darkness without Him.

To learn more about the School of Prayer for All Nations or to register for an upcoming session, visit imb.org/span. Questions can be emailed to SPAN@imb.org.

Watch a related message from IMB President Tom Elliff: http://vimeo.com/70780511

*Name changed

'Lord, bless the missionaries'

           

(Listen to an audio version at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/169/16904/16904-95293.mp3)

It’s a familiar prayer. Too familiar, some say, to mean much.

“Lord, bless the missionaries.”

For church folks of a certain age, these words are as comfortable and automatic as “Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies” or “Bless the gift and the giver.”

Mission leaders who’ve heard this prayer uttered countless times sometimes criticize it as perfunctory, meaningless or ritualistic. Which missionaries? Where? Bless them how? And what about the people missionaries are trying to reach with the Gospel? Don’t they need prayer, too? A quick “Lord, bless the missionaries” gives people an excuse to check praying for missions off their to-do list, like dropping a buck or two in the offering plate takes care of supporting missions.

Effective praying for missionaries and their ministries needs to be a bit more specific.

“I continue to be intrigued that God, a sovereign God, would link His activity over the nations to the prayers of His people,” said Jerry Rankin, retired IMB president. “But are we willing to move beyond a simple ‘God bless the missionaries’ and pray to invoke His blessings on their efforts? Prayer is not simply a way to bless the strategies and methods of our missionaries. It is the foundation of the strategy. Missionaries go to tell the story and to reap the harvest, but if the doors are to be opened, if the barriers are to crumble, if hearts are to be softened, it’s our responsibility to pray them into the kingdom.”

Wanda Lee, Woman’s Missionary Union executive director-treasurer, made a similar observation years ago: “Praying ‘God bless the missionaries’ once you are informed is not specific enough to open these dark places to the light of Jesus Christ. It will take informed, inspired praying to reach our world with the message of salvation.”

“Informed” is a key word. There are many ways to become informed about the needs of missionaries and the people groups they strive to reach. A good place to start is www.imb.org/compassionnet, IMB’s main prayer network, which offers a variety of ways to pray strategically for missionaries, mission teams and people groups. You and your church might even become part of one of those teams as you discover God’s heart for making disciples among all nations.

Storming the gates of darkness requires informed, committed spiritual warriors willing to pray big prayers — and “small” ones. God cares about little things, because they aren’t so little in the grand scheme of His work.

“It’s been another challenging week for us,” a missionary wrote recently. “My husband’s back suddenly started to spasm on Wednesday and by Thursday he was in real pain. Our crate arrived Thursday, which was a great encouragement. It’s been a little slow trying to get everything in place by myself, but I’ve done pretty well and things are shaping up. Did I forget to mention that my husband also slashed his finger pretty badly Wednesday afternoon? We just washed it, put a dab of super glue on it and bandaged it.

“Why do you need to pray for missionaries?” she asked. “Because these are some of the more minor things we face. Because a cut finger and severe back issues mean we’re a man down. Because we can’t just run down the road for medical attention. And because little things can become big things if you let them. God doesn’t need us to do His work. He can get it done however He chooses, with us or without us. He does need us to cooperate with Him if we are to be made holy and sanctified saints. And this requires the right attitude. Pray for us to persevere through all circumstances and to rejoice in all things. In this way, we honor the Lord and bring glory to His name. And that is what will draw the nations to Him.”

Are back spasms and a cut finger too trivial to pray about when the world is falling apart? Not if you’re the one experiencing them. Not if they prevent you from focusing on the work of God. Back spasms can shut you down faster than being arrested for spreading the Gospel. If you’re jailed, at least you can share Jesus with fellow inmates. Back spasms put you on the couch, afraid to move a muscle.

Lord, bless that missionary. But let’s get more specific: Heal his back, if You are willing, or teach him to rejoice in weakness and trust Your grace completely. Help him and his wife to persevere day by day when the going gets tough, when discouragement blots out hope like an eclipse. Give them joy. Give them strength and energy. Help them to lift Your light in the dark place where they live and use them to bring many new disciples into Your kingdom. And show us how we can do our part — through prayer first, but also through action.

Amen.

Be there

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/154/15420/15420-84831.mp3


Don’t just do something; stand there.

Better yet, kneel there. Be there.

It’s easy to switch the verbs in the old, accusatory challenge to do something — anything — rather than stand around. Lots of preachers, speakers and writers invert the familiar phrase to encourage us to slow down and be still. But it’s hard for us action-oriented Americans to stop and just be. Inaction, even for a moment, seems lazy, unproductive, even weird. We should be multitasking.

Stillness? It’s a little scary.

Yet stillness is where we meet God. To be His heart, His hands and His voice — the International Mission Board’s overarching theme for 2012 — we must lay aside the sound and fury of our ceaseless activities, our personal priorities and our very selves to encounter Him. We need His heart to make a difference in the world; not our divided, selfish hearts. His hands do the healing, not our powerless hands. His voice cuts to the core of searching souls, not our meaningless chatter.

“… If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me,” Jesus says. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will find it” (Matthew 16:24, 25, HCSB).

There’s plenty of positive action cited in that statement: come, take up, follow, save. Before any of that can happen, however, first there’s a negative action, an “inaction,” so to speak: deny self.

If you’re planning to attend the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting in New Orleans June 19-20, I recommend a visit to the IMB exhibit. This year it won’t be a media extravaganza or a place to socialize and pick up lots of free stuff. It will be, in essence, a tent — a place of prayer. There, you will find four stations where you will have the opportunity to deny yourself, to take up your cross, to follow Jesus and to lose your life for Him.

When you emerge, you’ll find visual representations of the thousands of people groups throughout the world who have yet to hear the name of Jesus, much less His loving offer of salvation. They wait for someone with God’s heart, hands and voice to come to them with the joyful news. He longs to send someone. Maybe you are that someone.

But you need to spend time in the tent first — whether it be a physical place or an inner one — to become one with God.

Psalm 46:10 is my favorite mission verse: “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

Stop. Listen. Know. Be. Only then can you act in obedience — no matter the cost. Only then will you know His power.

Meeting Jesus for coffee

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/116/11606/11606-63700.mp3

A young guy rushes into a coffee shop and joins Jesus Christ at a table. Jesus has been waiting for Him — apparently for quite a while.

Jesus breaks into a smile, but as He rises to offer a greeting, the young man says, “Hey, Jesus, sorry I’m late. Work was crazy today. No, don’t get up. I just got a little behind.”

“That’s no problem, Chuck,” Jesus replies. “I’m just glad that …”
,
“I’m glad I made it, too,” Chuck interjects, pulling a legal pad from his briefcase. “Listen, let’s get down to business. I have a lot of work here, lotta requests, OK?”

Jesus, used to the drill, hides His disappointment. He dutifully listens as His distracted friend races through page after page of petitions, peeves and random thoughts. When Chuck finally finishes, Jesus leans forward to respond. Before He can speak, Chuck looks at his watch and blurts, “Hey, look at the time! Gotta get going, Jesus. I’m just gonna wrap this up and say amen. It’s been a pleasure praying with You. I’ll be in touch. Have a good day!” He grabs his stuff and takes off, leaving Jesus alone at the table, sipping coffee.

That’s the storyline of “Coffee with Jesus,” a funny video produced by Church Fuel that you can find at GodTube.com (http://www.godtube.com/featured/video/coffee-jesus). Funny, but sad.

In an age of continuous, pointless distraction, we approach the Lord the way Chuck does more than we want to admit — to ourselves or to Him. Would you treat your friends this way? Not if you want to keep them. We rely on God’s patience, but how must His heart hurt over each little (and large) rejection?

At His last meal with the disciples, Jesus said, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15b, NASB). The King James Version translates the first part of the verse this way: “With desire I have desired … .” We’ll never understand the magnitude of His yearning at that moment, but it was deeper than tears. During His lonely agony in Gethsemane later that night, when He needed Peter and John the most, they fell asleep. He asked them, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40b, KJV).

It’s a mystery to think that God, the Creator of all things, intensely desires the love of such as us. Yet it is why He created us. Every once in a while, we need to remember why we are here.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5, NASB) is God’s great commandment, repeated again and again in Scripture. All the rest of the Law and the prophets depend upon it, Jesus said, along with loving our neighbor (Matthew 23:40).

When Israel chased after idols, it not only angered the Lord, it broke His heart. The Book of Hosea recounts the tragic story of a prophet who marries a harlot. He briefly feels the ongoing pain God experiences over the unfaithfulness of His people.

Returning to God means seeking Him alone — and no other. “When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, I shall seek,’” David prayed (Psalm 27:8, NASB). When we seek Him, He confronts the selfishness that permeates even our faith. We are not here just to enjoy His blessings, but to bless Him with our thoughts, words and actions.

“Do you love Me?” Jesus asks us daily, repeatedly, just as He asked Peter after His resurrection. Love of God in action is obedience. Love of God expressed is worship. And God wants worship to rise toward Him from every nation and people.

No one has explained the relationship of worship to missions for the contemporary church better than pastor/writer John Piper:

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of mission … . The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God … . ‘Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy’” (Psalm 67:3-4a, KJV).

What about evangelism, sending missionaries, preaching the Gospel to the ends of the earth, making disciples, starting churches? These are all means to an end. The end is that His name shall be exalted, that every tongue shall confess Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father.

Some folks like to think about the heavenly mansions and the streets of gold. But the true joy of eternity with God will be seeing Him face to face and singing praises to Him forever.

Lent in our hearts

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American Christianity has become so worldly, to use an old-fashioned word, that believers of an earlier age would barely recognize many of us as followers of Christ.

The ancient spiritual practices of extended prayer, fasting and silence are rare in a culture addicted to constant sensory stimulation. Abstaining from pleasures and entertainments for the purpose of holiness is rarer still.

Voluntary poverty and self-denial in our day sound so … medieval.

They’re actually a lot older than that. “Do not love the world nor the things of the world,” wrote John, Jesus’ beloved disciple, to first-century Christians. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:15,16, NASB).

On the surface, that statement seems to contradict Jesus, who said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, KJV).

The difference: God loves the world with a holy and selfless passion. Our love, without His Spirit, is unholy and selfish.

The unholy love John warned against emanates from “people who love themselves, and who love things without regard to God,” wrote Francois Fenelon, a 17th-century spiritual master. “When do we show that we love the world? When we are jealous of authority. When we love a reputation that we are not worthy of. When we spend idle time in the company of others. When we look for comforts that magnify the flesh. When we are weak and fainthearted in our Christian practices. When we do not take care to study the truths of the Gospel.”

Many Christians no longer follow the traditional church calendar. Evangelicals in particular are wary of the time-encrusted rituals of a season such as Lent, the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Lent has lost much of its meaning and solemnity even in the liturgical churches. Church members, if they still observe the season at all, often go through the motions of giving up some vice or beloved habit (double cheeseburgers, say), then revert immediately to unrestrained indulgence as soon as the 40 days are up.

That’s not the true spirit of Lent, which calls Christians to prayer, self-denial, self-examination and repentance. Think of Christ in the desert — fasting, praying and resisting the devil as He prepared for His mission on earth. If you can’t handle 40 days, can you devote one day, perhaps two or three, to the undivided pursuit of God?

Rightly observing Lent in our hearts is about loving God more. If we do that, loving ourselves less will be a natural result.

“As you stand before God, think about the mercy He has shown you, the enlightenment He has given you … the pitfalls of this world from which He has kept you safe,” Fenelon recommended. “Think about the crosses He has entrusted to you so that you may become a living sacrifice, because they are clear signs of His love. Let your gratefulness for the past inspire you with trust for the future. Be persuaded that He has loved you too much not to love you still. ...

“God has taken away the soft and comfortable things from your life. Why? Because you need to be humbled and to come to know yourself; because in vain you have sought elsewhere for help and comfort.”

If God has yet to remove the “soft and comfortable” things from your life, what if you voluntarily gave some of them to Him as an act of love and obedience?

When we love Him more, we love others more, particularly those who wander in darkness. It’s amazing how a heart like that of Jonah — who wanted to see Nineveh destroyed — can be transformed into the heart of God, who was passionately concerned about the 120,000 lost souls of that city.

A return to the true observance of Lent in our hearts could be a powerful impetus for missions, which is the lifting of God’s great name among all the nations.

Hosea, the prophet of a God heartbroken over the unfaithfulness of His people, delivered a beautiful Lenten appeal long before the beginning of Lent. Let’s make it our prayer:

“Come, let us return to the Lord,
For He has torn us, but He will heal us,
He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day,
That we may live before Him.
So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth” (Hosea 6:1-3, NASB).

Prayers for the backslidden

Listen to an audio version of this post at
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Jehoshua was one of the most dynamic church leaders in a challenging region of Asia. He was bold, evangelistic, a gifted Bible teacher.

That was before the fall.

He had the kind of charismatic personality “that people naturally fall in love with and follow,” says a Southern Baptist missionary in the region. “In the past, he has been a lover of the Word and taught many groups he himself had led to the Lord and then pastored.

“But he fell into sin and is now hiding from the Lord, sinning all the more.”

Carlos, a friend of Jehoshua’s, also was growing in his faith. But when the missionary who was discipling him left town for a month, “he, too, slipped back into dangerous sin. … He is wanting the Lord, not the sin, but feels trapped by it just as Jehoshua does.”

Missionaries have visited the two repeatedly to encourage them. Each time, “they are open to studying the Word with us and listening to the Lord with us and even have experienced Him deeply each time. But when we leave, they haven’t sought the Lord on their own.”

Other new followers of Christ in the area are watching. They’ve seen Jehoshua and Carlos crash and burn spiritually. Should they keep following their Savior and Lord by faith, despite the difficulty — or take the easy way out and slip back into the old ways, too? You can see the question in their eyes, according to missionaries.

We’ve become sadly familiar with high-profile moral meltdowns among religious leaders in America, where temptations of all kinds abound. Popular preachers, like showbiz celebrities, often begin to believe their own press clippings. Some fall prey to pride, power or the pressures of a fishbowl existence. Others stumble into adultery when they let down their guard.

Church leaders are at least as vulnerable as leaders in other walks of life, probably more so. Nobody blinks an eye when the devil picks off a famous athlete or a movie star. But if he can ruin the ministry of a well-known pastor, disillusion the flock and bring ridicule upon Christ’s church, that’s a good day’s work for the principalities of darkness.

How much more does Satan relish destroying newborn churches in the cradle among peoples who are hearing the Gospel for the first time? It’s the kind of spiritual infanticide that will keep souls in chains for generations to come.

Corrupting the church from within is also more effective than persecuting it. External attack often strengthens believers, forcing them to commit themselves fully to Jesus in order to survive and grow. Willing surrender to sin, on the other hand, poisons the church and sabotages its ministry.

Sometimes we romanticize the lives of Christians in tough places. They must be much stronger spiritually, we reason, since they endure sacrifices and brave dangers we’ve never experienced. Maybe they are stronger. But they’re just as human. They face the same day-to-day temptations: pride, rebellion, lust, discouragement, willful self-deception. They, too, can fall just like the one-time spiritual brothers of the Apostle Paul who rejected a good conscience and “suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith” (1 Timothy 1:19b, NASB).

What can we do to prevent such tragedies in the lives of struggling believers around the world? We can pray.

“Prayers for the backslidden” is the title of the appeal missionaries sent on behalf of Jehoshua, Carlos and others in their corner of Asia. Here are some of their prayers, which we can apply to struggling believers worldwide:

* Lord, help them to understand and receive your grace and forgiveness so they will repent of their sin and love You with all their hearts. Make them strong and courageous to stand up for what is right and choose to walk Your paths. Cause them to fall deeply in love with You, Your Word, Your voice, Your presence and power.

* Lord, let them know You as Living Water to their souls, as the Bread of life to satisfy their every need. Purify their hearts. Pick them up from the pit where they’ve chosen to be stuck in mud, and place them in the Water of life where there is cleansing and joy. Show them the way out, and give them courage to head there. All the things they run after are leaving them still unsatisfied, but You, Jesus, can quench every thirst and satisfy every need.

* Lord, we pray also for those who have come to Christ through Jehoshua and Carlos. Don’t let them be led astray by their leaders’ sin. Protect Your lambs, every one of them. Don’t let any of them be lost to the enemy. Raise up the believers to be bold enough, hungry enough, to want to meet together to worship You, read Your Word and follow You all the days of their lives. Build Your church so that believers will have a passion so deep they will love thousands into Your kingdom.

The neglected majority

American news media, when they cover international events at all, tend to focus on wars, disasters, Europe and the Middle East – and ignore most of the rest of the world.

It’s high time they (and we) pay more attention to South Asia – and not just because a dangerously unstable Pakistan is located there. The region also contains India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives.

Why should you care about these places? Here are eight reasons among many:

-- More people live in India than in all of North America, Central America and South America – combined.

-- There are more than 800 million Hindus in India, nearly three times the population of the United States.

-- The seven countries of South Asia are home to about one out of five people in the world. Most have never heard the Gospel even once.

-- More Muslims live in South Asia than in the entire Middle East.

-- India is the second-largest Muslim country in the world, despite the fact that Muslims are an often-persecuted minority there. Christians also number in the millions in India, but are an even smaller minority – and are experiencing increasing persecution by militant Hindus.

-- Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with about 85 percent professing Muslims. The other 15 percent are Hindus, with some Buddhists, tribals and Christians.

-- Maldives is 99.4 percent Muslim, and it is against the law for a visitor to enter the country with more than one Bible.

-- South Asia’s unengaged, unreached people groups (less than 2 percent evangelized, with no Christian mission groups actively seeking to reach them) have a population of more than 400 million people.

Is this huge, hungry slice of humanity worthy of our prayers, our resources, perhaps some of our lives?